Students blow whistle on cash for assignments

Apr 25, 2010 News

School launches probe as…

By Leonard Gildarie

In a case that seems to be the tip of the iceberg, the Head Teacher of an East Bank Demerara secondary school has initiated investigations into a suspected racket where students were paying teachers to do assignments issued by the Ministry of Education.
Students of Grade Seven and Eight claimed that there they were paying up to $10,000 for teachers to do their projects which they were supposed to have done themselves.
An official of the school on Friday refuted the amount paid and said that only $3,000 was being charged and that this was mainly because students were handing in below par assignments.
For the teachers, it was a way to ensure that students get the best possible score.
However, the Head Teacher of the East Bank Demerara school said that she is not taking the matter lightly since it challenges the credibility of the entire assignment process which is being set by the Ministry of Education.
She intends to bring the results of the probe to the attention of the Department of Education.
The assignments are geared to prepare students for the eventual School Based Assignments of Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC), which were designed for students to earn scores on do-it-yourself assignments. SBA assignments, mandatory for some subjects, account for some 40 per cent of the total marks of the actual subjects.
Students claimed that when they were issued with the assignments, they were told that it could be done by the teacher and that the payment was up to $10,000.
However, a number of the students, unable to afford, used local internet cafes to type up the assignments.
According to two students, who blew the lid off the scheme, the students who did the projects themselves were told that they needed to be “done over”; “there were mistakes”, “it was not the right format”.
According to the students, they were convinced that this was a ploy to get them to pay money to the teachers.
On Friday, the Head Teacher acknowledged that there were falling standards among students, many of whom were not reading enough. In addition, to poor writing and comprehension skills, there are clear indications that the Parent/Teacher Association is not working.
“Both the parents and teachers have to play a bigger role and pay more attention to the students. They simply are not reading enough.”
Last year, the CSEC office in Georgetown ordered several local private schools to cease doing SBAs after they reportedly found the assignments compromised.
Again, teachers were doing the actual assignments and submitting them as if the students had completed them.
The private schools were told to do what is known as the Paper Three, an additional written paper.
However, this sanction was relaxed somewhat and SBAs were done for some subjects.
There have been several reports of SBAs being compromised and according to one education official, there is an urgent need for a review of the entire system to ensure that students and educational institutions fully comply with the requirements.

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Students blow whistle on cash for assignments

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